


Scars

by blubuddi974



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: A LOT OF DIALOGUE, Daryl can't remember how old he is, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Rick complains about being old, Sharing a Bed, Smooching, i don't know why 'a lot of dialogue' is all caps, i tried to fix it, it didn't work, its a lot of talkin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 07:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16698193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blubuddi974/pseuds/blubuddi974
Summary: Rick and Daryl have a lot more in common than they originally thought.





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> So... I've been on a bit of a Walking Dead kick recently, and I've been writing like a monster, but this was just a little idea I had that I churned out in just a couple hours. I did want it to be a little longer than it ended up being, but I didn't know how to make it longer without making it feel like it was just filler to up the word count, and I like it the way it is. It's also not beta'ed, as all of my garbage works are. So I do apologize if there are any spelling errors, grammar mistakes, or sentences that just don't make sense, I did look over it real quick to try and catch anything, but some things can slip through. But anyway, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Also, just a note, this takes place between s2 and s3, during what some like to call 'The Lost Winter' but this is after winter, so it's more like 'The Lost Spring'

Rick knows Daryl has scars, one of the few who actually does, he’s seen them a few times, the first time being back on the Greene farm, when he helped Hershel get Daryl’s shirt off so he could treat the wound on his side. It came as quite a shock, to see the criss-crossing raised scar tissue littering the planes of his back, but then all his mannerisms started to make sense when Rick connected them to childhood abuse. He’s never really been able to actually _look_ at his scars, since Daryl doesn’t like anyone to see them, but what he has seen makes his blood boil. From what he can tell, they’re old, very old, which means that whoever was doing this to him had been doing it since he was just a kid, which just infuriated Rick even more; just the thought that someone could do this to an innocent child, not that anyone of any age deserved to be abused.

Rick groans as he eases down onto the bed, they, meaning him, Daryl, Glenn, and Maggie, were on a run while the others were holed up in a house one neighborhood over. The sun had fallen beyond the horizon and they decided to rest for the night and continue their searches the next morning before going back to the group. The house they decided to stay in only had two bedrooms, and while Daryl had said he’d stay on the couch and Rick could have the other bed to himself, the former cop insisted they share. He watches as Daryl shoves a dresser in front of the door, barricading them inside, he’d told Glenn and Maggie to do the same in their room since both doors swung inward, which could cause problems if there were walkers pressing up against them. Once he is sure they’ll be fine, Daryl walks around to the other side of the bed and drops down onto the mattress without grace or concern, causing Rick to chuckle.

“What?” Daryl asks, looking over his shoulder at him.

Rick shakes his head. “Nothing.” He laughs again. “Just, to be young again”

“Shut up.” Daryl bends to remove his shoes. “You’re not that much older than me.”

“How old are you?” Daryl hums for a moment, as though he actually had to think about how old he was. “Do you really not remember?”

“Shut up.” Daryl shoots him a glare when Rick laughs. “Thirty… Five? Six, maybe.” Rick snorts. “What about you, grandpa?”

“Forty.” Rick pauses. “Wait, maybe forty-one. Winter’s over, so probably one.” Daryl huffs out a laugh. “Shut up.”

“You were born in winter?”

Rick nods. “Yup. January fourteenth.” Rick looks over his shoulder as the bed shifts and watches Daryl make himself comfortable, before deciding he should probably take his shoes off and get ready for bed. “What about you?”

“September sixth.” Rick nods and turn to take care of his shoes. He yanks them off of his feet and places them in front of the nightstand, then tugs his socks off and stuffs them into his boots. He then takes off his gun belt and puts it by his shoes but takes his gun out and puts it on the nightstand for easy access in case he needs it. After a moment of going back and forth in his head, he decides to take off his t-shirt, knowing that he’ll get too hot with it on, since he figures it’d be too weird to take off his jeans. Another soft groan makes it was out of his throat when he removes his t-shirt, and he presses the heel of his palm into his back where it twinges. He feels the bed shift behind him and as he’s trying to figure out where to put his shirt, he feels Daryl’s fingertips gently touch his right shoulder. He jerks away from the unexpected touch involuntarily, and Daryl snatches his hand back with a mumbled, “Sorry.”

Rick shakes his head. “No, it’s all right. What were you looking at?”

“You got a scar.” Daryl’s gentle fingers touch his shoulder again and trail diagonally from the top of his shoulder blade to the middle of his back.

Rick nods, remembering the old scar, ropy and stretched, distorted from his body growing from a boy to an adult. “Yeah, that’s right. I forgot about it.” He can practically feel the jealousy radiating off of the hunter, he knows Daryl hates his scars with a burning passion and must be envious of Rick’s ability to forget about his own.

“How’d you get it?”

Rick is silent for a moment. “My dad used to be an alcoholic. It was particularly bad when I was real little. He would drink as soon as he’d come off of his shifts at work and would go into work the next day hungover.” He doesn’t know why it’s so easy to tell Daryl things, but he likes that it is, it was never easy to tell Lori or even Shane about anything. “My mom was worried about him, she was scared he’d drink himself to death, but on top of that, my dad was also a mean drunk, like, he was mean.

“I was, I think, eight. Eight years old, and I had just gotten home from school. We lived only a few minutes from my elementary school, so I just walked back and forth. But, uh, I went upstairs to drop my backpack off in my room and then went back downstairs to get a juice box and crackers so I could have a snack while I did my homework. But as I was going into the kitchen, my dad stopped me and asked me to get him a beer from the fridge, so I did. I got it out of the fridge, and because I had just learned that day from Shane to open aluminum cans, I opened it for him.” Rick feels Daryl shift behind him as though he knows what comes next. “I was so excited to show him that I could open cans now, that I ran into the living room to show him, but my foot caught on the edge of the rug and I tripped. The can flew out of my hands and I hit the floor, and when I looked up, I saw that the can landed in his lap and was spilling all over his clothes and the chair. The look on his face was one that I still, to this day, remember vividly, just this expression of pure rage.

“He got up off the chair and the can rolled off his lap and onto the carpet and was spilling beer on the rug. He grabbed my arm and yanked me up off the floor, which dislocated my shoulder, and then tossed me across the room. He took his belt off, it was his favorite this to use to discipline, and folded it in half and started to beat me with it. He was yelling at me as he did it, but I don’t remember anything that he said, though I’m sure it had something to do with me spilling beer on his clothes and the carpet. I guess I was too preoccupied with the pain to listen. I don’t know how it happened, but I guess in his rage, his grip on the belt slipped, and the end with the buckle came free when he was drawing his arm back, so when it came back down, the prong in the buckle ripped through my skin, which shows the force that he used.

“I should say that it didn’t go on for very long. It only happened for a matter of seconds. My mom was upstairs taking a nap and my screaming had woken her up and she ran downstairs to see me with blood pouring out of this gash on my back and my father with the belt in his hand, and she told me that he looked scared, that all the colour had drained from his face like he was realizing what he’d just done. She didn’t have the time to confront him about what he did, so she grabbed a hand towel out of the downstairs half-bathroom and folded it up and pressed it against my back, then picked me up and drove me to the emergency room. The scar healed well, though it took a long time to fully heal, and I also had dozens of dark bruises all over my back that also took a long time to go away. My mom and I stayed with her parents for a few weeks, and then she went back to stay at the house while I stayed at my grandparents until she thought it was safe for me to go back. She didn’t tell me what happened between then until I was about thirty, she told me that she almost left him, my dad, and she told me that she threatened to leave him if he didn’t get his act together. He lost his job for over a year, after it came out that he did what he did, and my mom had to get a job to get money while he went to rehab and AA, and he only got his job back when he presented his one-year-sober chip.

“It was the only time I was ever scared of him, and he still felt guilty over it up until he died, but for most of my childhood after that, until I was maybe fifteen, I didn’t even remember it happened. I guess it was so traumatic that I completely omitted it from my memory, and I only asked my mom about the scar because someone in my gym class asked me about it. It was really a shock, when she told me about it, because that wasn’t who my dad was, he didn’t even let us have alcohol in the house, let alone drink it. I almost thought she was lying, it was such a bizarre story and I thought it had to be fake. I loved my dad, and I know he loved me too, and he would never intentionally do anything like that. But, in some twisted sort of way, I’m kind of glad it happened, because I don’t know what my life would be like if he hadn’t.”

They sit in silence for a while, Daryl’s gentle touch still slowly trailing up and down the scar. It’s a comforting touch, his rough, but warm, fingertips pressing softly against his skin, a bright contrast to Lori’s cold hands that for some reason made Rick’s skin itch when she touched his scar. Rick opens his mouth to speak, to say that they should go to sleep, but Daryl breaks the silence.

“My dad used to beat me.” His voice is soft, like if he says it too loud, the whole world will know. “He liked his belt the best, but fists and anything else within reach worked just as well. He was a drunk, he didn’t have a job, technically, he was into the drug trade, got his money that way, so the only time he stopped drinking was when he was asleep. He was always like that though, which I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse, but after my mom died, it all just got worse. I take after my mom, looks wise, don’t look anything like my dad, Merle got all o’ him. He hated that, made him think maybe I wasn’t actually his, so he took it out on me. It got worse when she died because I looked like her, I guess, I was never actually sure. Maybe it was because it was easier to take it out on me than Merle. Merle always fought back, I was never a fighter with him, just made it all worse.” Daryl takes his hand back and Rick misses the warmth as soon as he does. The former cop turns, looking at the hunter who looks back at him, locking their gazes together, an emotionally vulnerable look in his eyes. “Why is it so easy to talk to you?”

Rick shrugs. “I don’t know.” He sees Daryl’s eyes drop to his mouth before flicking back up to his eyes. Rick turns further, pulling his right leg up onto the bed to face the hunter better, and thinks; he thinks about their relationship and how it’s evolved over the last six or so months, about how his heart swells when he sees the hunter interacting with Carl and when he shows off what he caught for their dinner. He’d at first chalked it up to just being grateful for the man’s presence, then he wrote it off as just being a weird crush that would go away in a matter of days, but now, months later, he knows that it’s more than that.

Giving Daryl plenty of time to pull away or stop him, Rick reaches towards him, cupping his face with his right hand, his fingers curling with the curve of his skull, and drawing him closer. Daryl doesn’t fight him, he lets Rick pull their faces closer together, his eyes fluttering shut. Rick stops just before their lips touch, the two men breathing each other’s air for a moment, before his eyes slip shut and he presses his lips to Daryl’s. It’s everything Rick hoped it would be and more, and he brings his other leg onto the bed, shuffling towards the other man and bringing his other hand up to Daryl’s face. His skin burns where the hunter’s hands rest on his hips, pulling him closer to his broad chest. Rick slowly pulls away, reconnecting their lips in quick kisses a few times before fully pulling away. They look at each other for a while with hooded eyes and soft smiles before Daryl pulls him back in for another kiss. “We should sleep,” he murmurs against Rick’s lips.

“We should.” They share a few more tender kisses before finally getting under the covers and laying down. Rick presses himself into Daryl’s side, tucking his right arm underneath himself and throwing his left over Daryl’s chest, then slotting his left leg in between Daryl’s, and resting his head on his shoulder. Daryl laughs softly and his right hand comes up to grasp Rick’s left, and his left arm comes around Rick’s body, warm knuckles coming up and dragging gently across his side, occasionally stopping at the mangled tissue of Rick’s gunshot scar.

“What about this one?” he asks.

“You never heard?” Daryl shakes his head. “I got shot, back before everything happened. It was a pretty average day, then we got a call about a high speed chase from Linden County, grand theft auto, two suspects. We ended up in a shootout with the two guys, I got tagged, right in the chest, knocked the wind outta me. There ended up being a third man. We all thought it was over after the reported two were killed, and we dropped our guard, and he caught me right there, then came the coma and then the end of the world and then I woke up.” Rick pauses. “I don’t know how long I was out, actually. I don’t think I ever actually thought about it until now.”

Daryl’s head turns to him and his hand leaves his side to come up to the back of his head and the man presses a kiss to Rick’s curls, and the former cop returns the favor by turning his head and pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Night, Rick,” he mumbles, his hand returning to Rick’s side.

Rick smiles softly and adjusts himself to get comfortable, pressing himself closer to the human furnace that is Daryl Dixon, then letting his eyes fall shut and murmuring a final, “Goodnight.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my hot garbage, I had fun writing it, sort of, writing child abuse in never fun, but I liked writing the end. I just want my boys to be happy. But, like I said before, I've been on a Walking Dead kick and I have like six different wips for just this fandom that I'm working on all at the same time, so uh, if you're interested in reading more of my hot garbage, then let me know and maybe I'll find the courage to post one. Anyways, I'm dumb. Thank you for reading, I'm leaving now


End file.
